Search with Solr

The ubiquitous Google search delivers fast and precise results. Onsite searches always have to compete with this quasi-standard. Simple text searches are therefore often not sufficient, especially for applications with large amounts of data.

Apache Solr closes this gap and can be optimally customised to your individual use case.

Solr Functions

Solr offers a wide range of functions and is robust and easily scalable. We highlight five key features as examples:

1. With its own Solr server, Solr is a powerful search engine that guarantees fast and efficient searches even with large amounts of data. 
2. Solr supports faceted search so that users can filter search results according to categories, attributes or tags.
3. Solr prioritises search results effectively for users thanks to individual relevance ranking.
4. The error-tolerant full-text search searches for any phrases without having to hit the exact wording.
5. Solr also indexes documents (e.g. Word, Excel, PowerPoint) and assets so that they can be included in the search results.

Solr Conception

Our UX experts thoroughly analyse your requirements. In collaboration with you and our Solr experts, we develop a customised concept for your individual use case.

Solr Implementation

The implementation of Solr offers a range of technical options for which sound planning, expertise and experience are crucial. In addition to implementing the central search functions, this includes correctly configuring the Solr servers for optimal performance, mapping data sources and ensuring data security and integrity. Our experts will realize a successful and effective Solr implementation for you.

Solr Hosting

As mentioned, Solr works independently of the web application on its own server, on which a high-performance search index (Solr core) is built. Our specialized hosting services guarantee you a reliable and scalable infrastructure to maximize the performance of your Solr application.

ISB: Faceted Search

For the State Institute for School Quality and Educational Research(ISB), a full-text and document search (Solr FAL) was integrated with Solr for the go-live of the platform.

The aim of the following expansion stage was to optimise the UX of the search by means of extensive faceting and an additional sorting function. With this expansion stage, it is now possible for users to display search results sorted by relevance or topicality, to narrow them down by content type (pages and/or documents) and to filter the search results by subject area (e.g. ‘Gymnasium’). 

Case study ISB

Multidomain Search Interface

For an enterprise customer with a large, multilingual, multidomain instance, we used Solr to implement a search that builds a cross-domain and cross-site index.

The objective of this project was to display results from the independent websites of all business areas in the onsite search on the parent company site. Within the respective business areas, however, only results from the corresponding domain context should be displayed.

DBmobil: Solr × SPA

For DBmobil, we integrated the ‘Germany Atlas’, a single-page application, into the digital magazine.

In the Solr search, individual content from the atlas (e.g. ‘sights’, ‘restaurants’) should be displayed as separate info snippets within the results display of the onsite search for corresponding search entries. When selected from the search results by the user, the info snippets should then be displayed via deep linking in the context of the Germany atlas as an active element of the single-page application.

Case study DBmobil